In ancient Greece, Plato warned of the danger to the state of 'musical innovation'.
More recently, Leopold I of Belgium wrote to queen Victoria: 'Beware of artists, they mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most dangerous.'
It’s no secret that countless governments have tried to suppress the voices of artists for fear of the power they might have to sow seeds of questions and different ideas in the minds of all people.
3 March was Music Freedom Day,…
Skateboarding is a global language, over the years it has reached unimaginable places. It has allowed new generations, cultures, and traditions to resignify the environment in which they find themselves and to see in the skateboard a place to excel and express themselves with the freedom of athletes.
Although it is true that Afghan culture has been exposed to an insurmountable war, the most affected have been its population who, without opportunity and in extreme poverty, have had to…
Photograph: my parents’ registry-office wedding in 1971, drinks with my dad’s family.
Photograph: my mother with all my dad’s female relatives, glamorous hair and flowing dresses and cigarettes, all laughing.
Photographs: one-year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old me with various other small children in various large gardens.
Odd/not odd – all white faces, well I suppose they would be. Even though they were living in a country with a white population around 20 percent.…
It’s not often a work of televised fiction comes along that I would call important.
Watching Russell T Davis’ new five-part miniseries, It’s A Sin, for me, ‘important’ was the only word to describe it.
The series focuses on the lives of a group of young, gay men and their friends, in London during the height of the AIDS crisis in Britain. It’s A Sin is, unsurprisingly given the topic, tough viewing; I am not ashamed to admit I wept.
I was born in…
Last year, I reviewed Men who Hate Women by Laura Bates. Since then, I’ve been thinking about the issues raised there more frequently than I would normally like.
Of course, I am aware that there are extreme misogynists, there probably always have been, but they’re more obvious these days and they have the opportunities to spout their opinions (to which they are entitled, I guess) where I can read them.
It’s unfortunate that I am unable to bypass the comments page, or…
Image
CND vice-president Bruce Kent recently had this photo taken to show off his unbroken run of Housmans Peace Diaries from 1980 to 2020. Do you have a longer sequence? Do you own more than Bruce’s record-breaking collection of 41 one-year-after-the-other Housmans Peace Diaries? If so, claim your prize by sending a photo to: editorial@peacenews.info
I hope that you found the Whiteness issue useful. I have one more thing to say to white readers, to folk who want to prioritise anti-racism.
If you are a white person who aims to be in this for the long haul, then you may need to dig deep and find some ways that you personally can benefit from the rooting out of racism.
White US philosopher Shannon Sullivan ends her thought-provoking book on White Privilege by pointing out that there are problems with white people…
22 January saw a landmark moment for the global peace movement – the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons entered into force on 22 January 2021 after it reached its 50th ratification last October.
When the treaty first came into being, thanks to the work of peace campaigners around the world (under the umbrella of ICAN), we were still able to gather together safely in large numbers.
There was a great celebration at Faslane, the nuclear weapons base just outside of…
Unlearning racism. Surely, Cath, you can’t be questioning such an obviously good thing to do? No, no, honest to god, I’m glad, I wanted to be part of a white caucus doing this stuff years ago, but, excuses, excuses, didn’t prioritise it.
And the housing co-op is an excellent ready-made group of people who know each other well – it is clear that most of us want to be held accountable and want the skills to hold each other accountable. Fab!
But I do feel a bit defeated and glum…
On 6 January, something happened in Washington DC that has not happened since the US-UK War of 1812. The Capitol building, that instantly-recognisable symbol of US democracy, was stormed by Donald Trump supporters.
I watched, agog, as many of the same people who called peaceful BLM protesters ‘thugs’ donned assault rifles, gas masks and body armour, and attempted to reverse the results of a legitimate federal election.
Rhetoric has consequences.
Just like the ‘Stab in…
How are you all? I hope everyone is well. I know there’s one or two subscribers who will be thinking ‘What does she mean? Is there a reason I won’t be well?’ because after all, this pandemic is a hoax. Isn’t it?
Well, no, it isn’t. Anyone who works in health care will tell you that’s nonsense. Anyone who’s had COVID-19 will tell you that’s nonsense, especially those suffering ‘long Covid’, which seems to be somewhat like ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
And as for ‘it’s just flu…
In March 2020, as the COVID pandemic started, artist Matthew Burrows launched the Artist Support Pledge online, on the image-sharing platform, Instagram. It was a forward-thinking response to the economic collapse that artists were about to experience – it works with the principle that generosity is infectious.
The idea is simple: artists post an image of their work on Instagram and tag it with #artistssupportpledge so that the pictures can all be found in the same place. They offer…
A woman’s going to send the drones
So ready the covers of your Vogues
The food bank lines are now miles long
But a woman’s the one who sends the bombs
Liberal feminism can’t be wrong
When a woman’s the one who sends the bombs.
Can’t get workers PPE
But you go girl Nancy Pelosi
All hail the bipartisan war parties
Now Trump is gone we all agree
George W Bush has been redeemed
The war criminals are on our team
And there’s a…
One time, back in the 1980s, when I was hitching at the bottom of the M1 motorway in North London, a car pulled over for me, late, as if the driver had not been intending to pick anyone up and had made the decision at the last minute.
I ran up the slope with my rucksack and my sign, and I crouched down by the window. The driver, an East Asian man, peered out and asked me: ‘Are you Chinese?’
I had to say, reluctantly: ‘No, I’m Nepali.’
He hesitated a second, and then…
The PN staff have each chosen their favourite books and films they read and saw this year. Here’s what we came up with!
The best book I’ve read this year? Difficult one. How do you compare different genres? The most enjoyable was Becky Chambers’s The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Hodder and Stoughton, 2015, £8.99) and A Closed and Common Orbit (Hodder and Stoughton, 2016, £8.99).
This is two-thirds of her ‘Wayfarer’ trilogy.
It’s feminist…
As global citizens, we want to change the reality on the ground for people in our immediate communities and those around the world.
We want to stop the pain, level the inequalities and stop the bombs from falling. And, so often, we can’t do that, or we can’t do it quickly enough. So often, we aren’t able to physically intervene to make things better on the ground for our neighbours.
Of course, there is a time for direct action. When we have energy, time and organisation to…
In 1969, the Nixon administration charged eight US activists with having conspired to cross state lines ‘with the intent to incite, organize, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry on a riot’ outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Infamously, the judge (Julius Hoffman) ordered the only Black defendant (Bobby Seale) to be bound and gagged, after he insisted on his right to represent himself.
Seale’s case was declared a mistrial but five of the…
COVID-19 has robbed the world of a rare person. Still very much in his prime at a youthful 92 years old, Jim Radford passed away in Lewisham hospital before old age could catch up with him.
As a 15-year-old galley boy on the rescue tug, Empire Larch, Jim was the youngest known participant in the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.
His song, ‘The Shores of Normandy’, recounting his experiences of that day, was brought to the attention of a wider public during two televised…
‘I can’t speak openly’. This phrase has become a motif for me in the last fortnight. I’ve heard it from people involved in a messy social club conflict, from both sides in a housing co-op divided in two, and from people feeling bullied in their own co-op.
I’ve had it confided to me by friends and heard it in my own head.
It’s so frustrating, this (often justified) fear, which contributes to a vicious circle of lost trust, lack of communication, (sometimes wilful)…
